Rats are eating my Car

luvflyin

luvflyin

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Luvflyin
or maybe it's some other rodent, I dunno. Anyway, car's in for service and the service dude said something is eating away at harness wires near the firewall. I store this care for extended periods from time to time. So anyone got ideas on how to deter the hungry little buggers? Other than like a rat sensor wired to a stick of dynamite.
 
We have found an anti-rodent spray that has been totally effective at keeping mice out of our gas grill, it's called Grandpa Gus's. It's mix of peppermint and spearmint oils, I think. Nontoxic, organic, and works. We also toss a bar of Irish Spring in our storage shed in the fall, and find it unmolested by mice in the spring, so apparently they don't like that smell either.
 
My neighbor lost a large portion of his wiring harness to squirrels. This happened a couple days before he was going to sell that car. Other than keeping it inside, I don't know a good way to keep rodents out once they get a taste. Good luck.
 
Matthew said:
My neighbor lost a large portion of his wiring harness to squirrels. This happened a couple days before he was going to sell that car. Other than keeping it inside, I don't know a good way to keep rodents out once they get a taste. Good luck.
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I think it's likely to be squirrels.
 
luvflyin said:
I think it's likely to be squirrels.
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There are squirrel traps that will fit under the car. Bait them with peanut butter and birdseed.

This is the one I like, squirrels check in but they don't check o

https://www.wildlifecontrolsupplies.com/animal/WCSTUBERR.html

I got the optional end caps. There will be 3, one is closed, the other two have small openings so a squirrel can fit but larger critters can't. And you can use the closed end-cap so they can enter only from one side.
 
Some of the German manufacturers went to soy based wiring harnesses, recyclable, renewable, etc., which is great except varmints love soy beans.
 
Honda used to sell a tape with capsaicin in it to wrap around the wires. I tried that a few years ago with success. Sold the vehicle a few months later so don’t know about long term effectiveness.
 
Park it under water?
The spray mentioned above is a good bet. I used it before and seemed to be effective.
 
Baiting traps seems like a bad way to go to me. Aren’t you trying to repel critters, not attract them? Lol
 
Tarheelpilot said:
They are already there eating the car. Might as well kill the little buggers.
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But the bait is still there when the trap springs….attracting more that you aren’t catching. You can’t kill them all.
 
Salty said:
But the bait is still there when the trap springs….attracting more that you aren’t catching. You can’t kill them all.
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Oh. I’m not talking about the little one mouse per trap stuff. I’m talking about the 20-30 per trap capacity industrial killing buckets.
 
Salty said:
You can’t kill them all.
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That is not true. If you are willing to work the problem by wreaking constant death and destruction in a particular area they will all die or eventually get the hint and quit coming there. Think of it as war ... REAL war!
 
Don't fix the oil leaks. My old truck is parked next to a mighty oak full of squirrels. Narry a nibble ;)
 
Matthew said:
The squirrelinator can catch them all. And if you get the optional basin, you don't have to release them somewhere to become someone else's problem.

And it will fit under a car.


https://ruggedranch.net/catch-mor-traps/
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I've got one. It has yet to catch anything.
We've had squirrels eat our car wires, vacuum hoses, intake boots, even the corners of the log house.
It seems that an individual squirrel gets a taste for car, house, whatever and it keeps coming back for more until it is removed. We have many squirrels around and most don't cause trouble.
 
My son’s pickup was totaled by mice. Mechanics wouldn’t touch it. Called it a bio-hazard.


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I made a set of cornhole boards and GF made the corn bags. Took them camping, unloaded them, and before we could unload everything else, the squirrels had chewed holes in some of the bags, and chewed a hole in a plastic tote.
Savages..
 
FORANE said:
I've got one. It has yet to catch anything.
We've had squirrels eat our car wires, vacuum hoses, intake boots, even the corners of the log house.
It seems that an individual squirrel gets a taste for car, house, whatever and it keeps coming back for more until it is removed. We have many squirrels around and most don't cause trouble.
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Maybe it needs to be baited with car parts?

My neighbor had an old Honda Accord that he was going to sell, then upgrade to something else for his newly driving daughter. He had a pretty good deal, then went to start it and couldn't get it out of "limp home" mode. It had been sitting in the driveway for a couple weeks between the offer and the sale date, and in that time the wiring harness was chewed through in a lot of places, several connectors were chewed down to the nubs, and at least a foot of the harness was simply missing. Probably that section was dragged off to a nest. That car was pretty much totaled after that.
 

It could be worse, you could be this guy.
 
luvflyin said:
or maybe it's some other rodent, I dunno. Anyway, car's in for service and the service dude said something is eating away at harness wires near the firewall. I store this care for extended periods from time to time. So anyone got ideas on how to deter the hungry little buggers? Other than like a rat sensor wired to a stick of dynamite.
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Moth balls. Under and 3-5 feet around the perimeter. Lots of them. Worked for my RV in my hangar over the winter. You can also put them inside on the floor, in an open container, if you’d like. You’ll just need to air the vehicle out well before using it. Good luck.
 
Cotton tail rabbits also like wiring. I bought a nice little motor home cheap years ago . Only problem was the rabbits had ate the wiring harness for the engine ,lights and rubber boots on the front wheel drive line.
I had to buy a service manual to figure out the "how to "on the wiring .
Couple motor homes later we were "Up the Yack ". (Home of the world famous "Dirty Shame " bar)
We had moved up to a Diesel pusher pulling a Honda CRV. The friend who was the campground caretaker told us to leave the hood open on the CRV. To keep the pack rats from nesting there. We were there a few days and just before we left I decided to lift the MH bed to check the engine for pack rats. Sure enough they had built a nice grass/stick nest atop the exhaust manifold by the turbo .
Here on the farm I leave hoods open on the vehicles stored in shed for the winter. Seems to help with the mice problem,
 
Salty said:
….You can’t kill them all.
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Metallica says you can…..

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This is what I use in my popup camper I store in my hangar. No visitors so far. Not sure how broad spectrum it is. Consists of mesh bags of smelly stuff which isn’t objectionable to us huuumans.
 
Very common here in Arizona. A common practice is to place a light or a set of clear/white Christmas lights under the vehicle and turn them on at night. Around here its mostly pack rats. I have a '65 Mustang in my back yard that I'm going to restomod once I'm done upgrading the plane and pack rats have eaten just about every wire and hose in the engine compartment. At one point the whole engine compartment was a giant nest. By the way, they ate the green poison stuff like candy.
 
Timbeck2 said:
Very common here in Arizona. A common practice is to place a light or a set of clear/white Christmas lights under the vehicle and turn them on at night. Around here its mostly pack rats. I have a '65 Mustang in my back yard that I'm going to restomod once I'm done upgrading the plane and pack rats have eaten just about every wire and hose in the engine compartment. At one point the whole engine compartment was a giant nest. By the way, they ate the green poison stuff like candy.
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Interesting idea about the lights.

I tend to get bats hanging out under the roof of my deck. Normally, I wouldn't mind that, except they leave a big mess directly under their hangout. I have some blue rope lights that I strung around under the deck ceiling for mood lighting or whatever. I stuck a timer on them so the come on dusk to dawn. Haven't had bats since.
 
The 1st step should be identifying the offenders. Check for sign, what’s been around, most everything poops.

Once you know what it is, do the layered approach, lethal, barriers, deterrents, etc..

Where we live there aren’t all that many squirrels, I don’t even deter them at the bird feeder, numbers are low. Now if they were to come into the house or garage, a different story. Mice are what I have an ongoing preventative with, over the years they’ve caused problems. I don’t care for possums either.
 
I have a Cateerpillar Excavator that the mice must think it is a big piece of cheese. Tried rodent repellent, Green blocks of poison, mouse traps, sticky paper, peppermint. Still looking for a better sloution - has cost me nearly thousand dollars, maybe more haven't added it all up!
 
There should be an automated way to fix this. One of the "Alien" movies featured a anti-person defense that was basically an IR controlled mini-gun. Well, it shouldn't be too tough to setup an IR camera, semi-auto pellet gun, and autonomous mini RC car to hunt rodents at night. Like a lethal for mice roomba. I know it sounds like I'm kidding here, but not really.
 
Albany Tom said:
There should be an automated way to fix this. One of the "Alien" movies featured a anti-person defense that was basically an IR controlled mini-gun. Well, it shouldn't be too tough to setup an IR camera, semi-auto pellet gun, and autonomous mini RC car to hunt rodents at night. Like a lethal for mice roomba. I know it sounds like I'm kidding here, but not really.
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You develop it and I'll buy it. I'm doing heroic things for garage space here because I don't want to leave my cars outside and it's getting very complex and costly.
 
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